Paper short abstract:

I examine the intimacy of encounters between citizens and ward members at the lowest level of urban governance. I reveal how such experiences emerge from and inform ward members’ understanding of their position, performance of duties, and differential responses to sections of their constituency.

Paper long abstract:

Inclusive urban governance is critical to the achievement of the SDGs, yet everyday experiences of municipal representatives have largely escaped scholarly attention. Ward members in Dehradun, India, are elected representatives at the lowest level of urban governance, and hence at the frontline of citizen/state encounters. Everyday politics is found in citizens' assertions of their rights, demands for services, claims for entitlements, and other requests for state action. Rather than uncritically celebrate the assertiveness of some sections of the urban citizenry, I interrogate the ways failures of governance are devolved to ward members, and the personal costs they bear. Scarce government resources, politics battles between the state, municipal and ward levels of government, and bureaucratic inefficiency, mean that the ability of ward members to meet the demands of citizens is severely constrained. At the same time, first-hand knowledge of the consequences of such failures for the poor, alongside raised citizens' expectations, profoundly affect ward members in their everyday lives, and their divergent responses to different sections of their constituency.

In this paper, I develop the notion of the 'intimate state' to capture the affective and relational aspects of urban governance. By examining the intimacy of ward member/citizen encounters in the context of the broader self-narratives, I reveal how such experiences emerge from and inform the ways ward members inhabit their position and perform their duties. As such, the 'intimate state' can inform analysis of decentralised governance, and the inclusiveness required to achieve the SDGs.